Tinicum Township eligible for FEMA money for Hurricane Sandy expenses

Tinicum Township is applying for about $75,000 in Federal Emergency Management Agency it is eligible to receive to defray clean-up costs from Hurricane Sandy.

Township manager Linda McNeill said the money would cover the cost of equipment and labor used almost entirely to remove countless trees and branches that fell and blocked roads during the October storm.

"They're paying us for all of the time for a period of a month, not just overtime ... in the past they (FEMA) only paid for overtime,'' she said.

At a December meeting, Supervisor Vincent Dotti said private property owners with trees downed by the storm could seek financial assistance for clean-up through the U.S. Departments of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency's Emergency Forest Restoration Program.

In other business, the supevisors adopted a state-required ordinance establishing regulations,mostly related to structure height, at the old Van Sant Airport.

The airport on Cafferty Road is on Pennsylvania's Register of Historic Places. It was built by John Van Sant in 1951 and operated as a private facility until 2003 when it was bought by Bucks County and now called Van Sant Airport County Park.

The airport maintains unpaved runways, no lighting for night operations and no instruments for approaching planes.

Township attorney Stephen Harris said in 2007, the state began requiring municipalities with airports to have what is called an "Airport Overlay District."

He said in general, the ordinance addresses safety issues such as height restrictions of buildings and trees, district boundaries and violation penalties.

As an example of what the law would prohibit, he said, "Think of someone who wants to put up a windmill (near the airport) that is 50-feet tall.''

Because the airport is located on a hilltop, he said building and tree height has never been an issue.

Before 2007, he said a state court ruled that such a law was optional, but in 2007 it was required by a state Supreme Court ruling.

The township has been working on the ordinance for about 18-months and before that, Harris said, it unintentionally fell by the wayside with the illness and death of the previous township attorney.

Allthough the township has not been in compliance since the court ruling, Harris added, ``There is no penalty for not doing it.''